


at the end of all things

by writerdragonfly



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For some, Atlantis was home. For others, it was their last resort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the end of all things

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those fics that I had no idea how to end so it kinda just kept going? I mean, generally speaking, I really like it though.
> 
> Big thank you to [asthmatic-dodongo](http://ashmatic-dodongo.tumblr.com) over on tumblr for looking it over for me, though it continued to multiply afterward so there are probably mistakes that weren't seen by eyes other than mine.
> 
> This is a post-apocalyptic plague on Earth fic, with the associated character death. I don't directly reference any deaths, and as such, if a character is not referenced, you can either assume they survived or died at your leisure. (I sincerely hope that made sense. <3)

-x-

 

The museum was dark, all the lights shut off long before they entered. Even the air was stale from sitting closed, locked up for so long.

 

John remembers being here before, years ago, decades ago, traveling with his mom and Dave while their father attended to business.

 

Back before the fall, back before everything.

 

He watches as Daniel wipes away a layer of dust from the glass cases, his face hard with a kind of stubborn reverence.

 

Not that he blamed him.

 

All of humanity, and most of what was left was held in halls like these.

 

"Any sign of recent access?" Laura asks, leaning on her cane.

 

"Nothing but dust," John sighs, "nothing but dust."

 

-x-

 

It had been a surprise, the end. Everything had been going well. The Wraith were mostly gone, the Ori destroyed, the Goa'uld nothing but a passing memory.

 

And then the cataclysm happened.

 

Most of those who did not immediately die from the disease running rampant through their systems had ascended.

 

But not all of them.

 

-x-

 

"It was a fail-safe. Some idiot in the SGC started playing with the Hoffan virus again, trying to make a fail-safe in case the Wraith..."

 

"Except it never would have worked," Beckett sighs into his coffee, "because it was designed with Pegasus humans in mind.  Different immunology, different allergens."

 

And it had spread, spread wide and far without the need for independent dosage.

 

It ate away at people from the inside out. 

 

"I never should have touched it."

 

-x-

 

There was plenty of coffee now.

 

-x-

 

Rodney had been Earthside when it hit. A week's leave to celebrate becoming an uncle again.

 

He hadn't found Rodney once they came back over.

 

"There's no point in searching for one man," the general had said, "when we should be rescuing thousands."

 

-x-

 

Rescuing thousands. Yeah, right. Why were they in Paris, then?

 

A dead city in a dying world.

 

Rodney told him he was in love with him in French. It hadn't been on purpose, drugged to the gills on alien weed and alcohol.

 

John had kissed him first, long and sweet.

 

It wasn't a surprise to either of them, even though he sometimes thinks it should have been.

 

-x-

 

According to his calculations, aided by Radek's quick work on the puddle jumper they'd brought through the gate, there were less than eleven thousand humans left on the planet.

 

Eleven thousand... _out of billions._

 

"If you leave, you will be in contempt of--"

 

"Of what? There's no one left to arrest me."

 

-x-

 

Six months after Rodney left, John finds him.

 

He's alive, sharing a house with his sister and her family. There's a homemade shield protecting their property, chickens in the backyard and a goat in the front.

 

All John has is a puddle jumper stocked with coffee and room for six.

 

They take the chickens and the goat with them.

 

 -x-

 

"You’ll like Atlantis, Maddy," Jeannie Miller says, "it's just like the stories."

 

-x-

 

"I stole the Mona Lisa," John admits to Rodney when they wrap around each other in the too small sleeping bag.

 

" _Why_?"

 

"There's a Stargate address on the back. From the Pegasus Galaxy."

 

-x-

 

They get married before they return to the Mountain. It's not official, _nothing's official_ anymore.

 

But they exchange rings (John made Rodney’s of melted crystal; Rodney made John’s ring of a ground down wingnut from a retired air plane taken from the Smithsonian.), Maddy throws silk flower petals all over the floor of the jumper, and the baby pukes on John's jacket.

 

It's not perfect, but it's good.

 

-x-

 

The general who had denied him the opportunity to search for Rodney is gone. John doesn't know where.

 

They come into the Mountain to find Jack O'Neill, two years retired and six months missing, kissing Daniel right in front of the Stargate.

 

"You came back," Daniel says to John in happy surprise, "and you found him!"

 

And John smiles, "Looks like you found yours too."

 

-x-

 

More than half the survivors speak a language that no one else does. Obscure African dialects and pidgin English, mandarin drenched in French accents.

 

Languages that have never touched English before, hidden for years in the seemingly empty corners of the world.

 

For all their travel throughout their galaxy and beyond, they never finished exploring their own planet. Never scoured every inch the way that they did throughout the stars.

 

-x-

 

“She's afraid,” Leia says, holding an older woman’s hand, “of the water.”

 

She isn't the first, nor the last.

 

-x-

 

Traveling through the gate to Atlantis is like an epiphany, a revelation that for all the years of misbegotten struggle to simply _understand_ between the myriad of languages and dialects and cultures of their homeworld, there was a way to paint it unnecessary.

 

It doesn’t translate every word, for every fifty words that translate there is one that doesn't, but it translates _enough_.

 

It translates enough of the countless languages of Earth that the people who are unwilling survivors of a war that wasn't theirs ( _yet_ ) can understand what their fellow survivors are saying.

 

-x-

 

It isn't perfect. Half of the people rescued ask to return home, back to a desolate landscape slowly overrun with grass and vines and dust. And they let them.

 

“Perhaps you should treat them as if they're not from your planet,” Teyla suggests, “but a different one. A new people, with whom you may later trade.”

 

-x-

 

They could return to Earth, settle there among the ruins and make a new life for all of them there.

 

John and Rodney, at least, discuss it.

 

But somehow in the years between the people they used to be and the ones the Pegasus Galaxy made them, Earth isn't quite home anymore.

 

Even if it was... it wasn't the same world anymore anyway.

 

-x-

 

“I want to do this,” Laura insists, her hand wrapped hard enough around her cane to turn her knuckles white, “and it's not just for you.”

 

-x-

 

They name her Terra, after the world they left behind. She's born on Atlantis, and Laura doesn't regret her choice for a moment.

 

“Hey,” Rodney says to his daughter when she opens her eyes--John’s eyes.

 

“Hey,” John says right afterward.

 

-x-

 

Daniel shares the stories of the Tau’ri with passionate glee, the old and the new, with anyone who will listen.

 

They visit Earth sometimes, where their cultures live on in museums and in stories that spread like wildfire across two galaxies, mixed together until they’re something new.

 

The people there--an eclectic mix of undereducated and overeducated, formerly rich and formerly poor, eccentric and mundane--they know of the Stargate and worlds of people as far as the eye can see and then some.

 

They rebuild and renew and revitalize.  It isn't perfect, the new Earth. They still fight and steal and it takes time for those who remain to make the laws that govern them.

 

But John is reminded of coming to Pegasus for the first time, and seeing the people who had never known a life outside the Wraith, but still _lived_ and thinks that, even after this, they will survive.

 

-x-

 

In Pegasus, they tell a story. It goes like this:

 

_In a land, far, far away lived the Tau’ri. They were many of them, and for thousands of years they grew and grew in number until there were nearly as many people as stars in the sky._

 

_And with their growth, they learned the danger of going too fast, the danger in their ego and civil war.  Their people had created an illness, and that illness spread throughout their planet until there was only thousands left._

 

_The Tau’ri who survived the illness were saved by the kindness of others, able to begin to rebuild and renew their world because those who survived had trusted in the nature of humanity._

 

_In each other._

 

_Though many remained on their planet, tending to the land that remained, many more of their people scattered themselves across the stars so they would live on long after._

 

-x-

 

John likes that story. The first time he hears it, they're visiting one of their more recent trading partners. Just his team--the four of them; still alive, still together.

 

They all have children now, even Ronon, which had surprised him as much of the rest of them.

 

They don't go on missions much anymore, though John doubts they'll ever want to stop completely. There's a whole galaxy out there to discover, even still.

 

And in this new corner of it, people are telling stories of the world that John and Rodney left behind, and the people they came from.

 

He tells it to Terra when they return to Atlantis. Tells her the story of her people, even though she's too young to really understand it.

 

She was born on Atlantis, in Pegasus, so very far away. But she's one of the last purely Tau'ri children that will exist.

 

It doesn't hurt as much as he thought it would.

 

-x-

 

For Terra’s fifth birthday, they go to Earth. They visit the graveyards where John’s family is buried, get passes ( _passes!)_ to visit the museums where their history is stored.

 

Terra’s favorite is the Air and Space Museum, and they take her through twice.

 

“That's your fault for telling her all those stupid stories,” Rodney says when they finally bunk down that night, but he's grinning when he says it.

 

They don't see the new museum until they're about to head back to the Stargate, still safely ensconced under guard at Cheyenne Mountain.

 

 _Remembrance Museum_ , it says, in beautifully wrought-iron letters.

 

Inside are holographic displays and picture collages of people, billions of people whose names had been lost when they died.

 

At the end of it, the images of the Atlantis Expedition--the first crew and all the ones who followed--are carefully put on display.

 

_The Heroes of Atlantis._

 

John doesn't feel like a hero, most days.

 

“You're from Atlantis, aren't you?” The museum guide says, just a hint of accent on his tongue.

 

“Yup,” Terra says, “you wanna hear a story?”

 

“Of course,” he says, crouching down to her level.

 

“In Pegasus, they tell a story...”

 


End file.
